Solo Startup

I often get questions from people who are very confused about what an RSS Feed is.

Here is a very creative video explaining how RSS works.

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Seth Godin has posted a very helpful checklist for you to go through before sending emails to people.  If you use email for small business marketing purposes then you should definitely ready this!

Read Seth Godin’s Email Checklist

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Paul Graham from startup firm Y! Combinator gives his perspective on what I call “leaving Dilbert-land”. His article You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss brings out the differences between the corporate programmer mentality and the qualities of a startup entrepreneur.

Take note that things are not always better at a startup. You just have more of a chance for freedom than at a large company.

Here’s a quote about that from the article:

Working for a small company doesn’t ensure freedom. The tree structure of large organizations sets an upper bound on freedom, not a lower bound. The head of a small company may still choose to be a tyrant. The point is that a large organization is compelled by its structure to be one.

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I worked at a startup during the “dot bomb” era and I was able to have life. Don’t get me wrong, I put in lots of all-nighters but there has to be a balance.

In my experience I have been fortunate (and also at the same time not so fortunate) to work for the type of workaholic entrepreneur that wants to make the company the number one priority in everyone’s life. I was fortunate in the sense of learning from the experience (enough said).

There’s been a recent spat of articles on the web regarding this type of personality. It all started with Jason Calcanis’ post, How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips) which was picked up by TechCrunch and the post, Calacanis Fires People Who Have A Life. To which, Calcanis has responded with Can you have a life and work at a startup company?.

This quote says it all from Calcanis:

My work *is* my life.

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Two masters students from Northern Ireland have created a new site called The Big Word Project which is selling words. Selling words? Yes, but more accurately, selling links.

For $1 per letter you can buy a word that appears in the English dictionary and you can change the definition to visually mean MY SITE, at least on The Big Word Project.

At first TBWP (am I starting something here?) reminded me of The Million Dollar Homepage but it is really not that shameless. However, it is brilliant. Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe have developed an experiment to explore what different words mean to different people and they are going to make some money at the same time.

The catch for people who would want to use TBWP for Search Engine Optimization is that you have to use a single word and it must be in the dictionary.

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